High above the mountains surrounding the beautiful Swat Valley in Pakistan a Global Predator drone circles, waiting to unleash its Hellfire missiles. In GLOBAL PREDATOR by Jack MacLean (Legend Publishing; $10.38 paperback; $2.51 Kindle), the National Security Agency pursues the trail of Osama Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. When a recording reveals new clues about al-Zawahiri’s plans, the NSA’s hunt for the international criminal escalates. A special intelligence team, led by Faiza Azhad an agent on a personal vendetta, plots to catch him at a meeting of high-ranking al Qaeda leaders.

Meanwhile, the local Taliban have been stepping up their attacks on anyone who dares to educate women. The situation is growing desperate; foreign aid organizations have closed their doors to the Pakistanis. All except English aid worker Sally Hodges. Despite the constant threat of the Taliban, Sally remains in Pakistan determined to build schools to help young women achieve an education. All she lacks is capital, which is why she’s agreed to a gift from her old flame Wilkins—a man hiding his own dark reason for being in Pakistan. When Sally is taken hostage at her school, Wilkins has an opportunity to redeem himself—if only he can escape from his own Taliban captors.

As Faiza continues to hunt al-Zawahiri, the clock is counting down to the terrorist rocket attack. Can the Taliban be stopped? GLOBAL PREDATOR is an adrenaline-fueled race through the mountains of Pakistan to a shattering conclusion.

JACK MACLEAN is the pen name of a prize-winning former foreign correspondent for a British newspaper with firsthand experience of Asia. He is the author of eight non-fiction works.

1.What
inspired you to write GLOBAL PREDATOR?

I think there is not enough engaging
fiction written that plunges the reader in the middle of current events so they
are not just entertained but come away feeling they understand the world better
than before. I was fascinated too with how we deal with data and surveillance –
whether its banks or the CIA – and how corrupting that is and how we are
manipulated by these masters of data.

2.What
kind of additional research did you do in order to write the book? What areas
of research did you find challenging?

I
was familiar with Pakistan’s problems and Islamic terrorism so the challenge
was to write about the technology behind the drones and its limitations. So
finding people working in this area who could explain it to me was difficult.
Then the problem was to cut down the information so it didn’t get in the way of
the storytelling. It took me out of my comfort zone of foreign policy issues.

3.Who
is your favorite character and why? Is there a character that you related to as
you wrote the novel?

Well, first I wanted to make sure it was
not autobiographical in any way. Then the villains are real life terrorists.
The central figure is Wilkins because I wanted to have an anti-hero, who is a
rogue banker, initially unsympathetic and selfish but gradually matures and is
transformed until he finds his better self. Also to make clear that The Global
Predator in the title refers not just to the drone but also the crooked
bankers, and terrorists.

4.Is
there a chance that Wilkins and Sally will return for another adventure? If so,
where will they go next?

It is possible they could but the original
idea was to have the Global Predator take on another mission in another part of
the world, such as Iraq.

5.Faiza
Azhad completes her mission by the end of GLOBAL
PREDATOR. Do you think she find a new purpose in her life? Where do you see
her going by the end of the novel?

She could certainly feature in another
field of conflict. I don’t think her lust for revenge has been satiated because
Ayman Al-Zawahiri is still alive and going strong. So she is very driven like the lead character
in the TV drama, Homeland.

6.When
you were creating the character Rob Stoner, what aspect of his character was
most important to you?

He is a clever schemer who is outwitted by
everyone - his boss who sets him the task of finding his co-conspirator, by the
Pakistan private investigator, and ultimately by Wilkins in a game of
prisoner’s dilemma. So in the end you feel a little sorry for him.

7.Have
you ever been to Pakistan before? Where else have you travelled? What travel
experience stands out to you?

Yes, I have been in Pakistan and
Afghanistan before the recent wars when it was safe to be a backpacker. So I
know the charm of the Swat Valley where most of the action takes place.

8.Wilkins
is featured playing a guitar in the novel. What kind of music does he like to
play? Do you play an instrument?

He plays in a rock band and likes to play
the blues. I can’t play the electric guitar – or any other kind – but my son
does.

9.How
would you classify Wilkins and Sally’s relationship?

Well, Sally is the one the reader
identifies with – she is doing something brave and worthwhile – but she is at
the mercy of both the Pakistan Taliban – and of course her selfish ex-boyfriend
Wilkins. So he tries to ignite her old feelings for him so he can escape but at
the end realizes he does love her.

10.What
do you think Sally took from her experiences in Pakistan? How do the events
that took place in Pakistan impact her view of the world?

Pakistanis want to educate their children,
especially their daughters, and so education has become a key battleground
between the violent Islamacists and the rest of the population. So Sally knows that winning this battle is
not only important for the people in the Swat Valley but everywhere.

11.Malala Yousafzai was featured in the news recently
after winning the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism in women’s education in
Pakistan. Did her story influence or inspire your novel?

As it happens, I
wrote the first draft of the book back in 2008 before she was shot but while
the conflict in the Swat Valley was in the news. So it is a fortuitous coincidence. I haven’t
read her biography either so I don’t know how it matches up to the fictional
Swat Valley – partly because I didn’t want to feel I needed to rewrite it. The
key point is that I am making things up, this is not journalism.

12.What are the most important pieces of information
that you want your readers to understand about the politics in Pakistan? What
perspectives on Pakistan do you hope your readers gain?

Pakistan’s
government may be awful allies to deal with, and their tolerance of an Islamic
agenda is reprehensible – but there are also plenty of decent honest and indeed
heroic people there fighting for the right values. We need to help those
people.

13.There is a lot of stereotyping around Islam,
especially after 9/11. How did you work with this issue as you were
writing?

In the story, I
don’t explore Islam very deeply either to condemn it or defend it– but I do try
to explain the context – the tribal politics of Pakistan, especially the
culture of the Pashtos, as well as the mentality of Al Qaeda people, and the
class conflicts in rural Pakistan. It is
important in a story that you see why the actions of each character make sense
to them, otherwise they are not credible.

14.What
was one of the biggest challenges in writing GLOBAL PREDATOR?

It was a huge challenge to move from
writing journalism and non-fiction books to writing a thriller. It took me a
very long time to learn the rules.

15.What was your writing process like for GLOBAL
PREDATOR?

Well I rewrote
it many times, often cutting out large chunks of background stuff in between
doing my normal work. It is quite frustrating because it could take a long time
to switch gears from researching facts
to just sitting there and inventing things, imagining scenes, dialogues, and
creating characters. It was very liberating in the end.

16.There is a lot of different technology featured in GLOBAL
PREDATOR. Do you like to stay up to date with the latest tech?

Yes, this was
enjoyable, more akin to journalism. I
imagined my readers would be fascinated by this technology, but later I realized
they are probably keener to find the main characters and their relationships
engaging because that’s what keeps anyone turning the pages. Initially, I had a
lot more stuff about the NSA which before the Snowden revelations was quite
hard to research. But I think readers
want action, and too much background stops the story moving along.

17.Were
there any authors who inspired you as you were writing GLOBAL PREDATOR?

To be honest, I tried not to read
thrillers during the writing process because I wanted to, and needed to, find
my own voice rather than trying to copy somebody else’s style. So I like to
read things like P.G.Wodehouse because open any page and you realize it
couldn’t be anyone else, and you accept his world is real even though it bears
only faintest relationship to any real events.

18.What
kinds of topics do you like to see covered in political-thrillers?

I think there is a growing appetite for
good fiction about the Islamic world as we try to understand what is going on.
It’s the new Cold War – but it’s a peculiar mix of 7th century
theology and 21st technology.
But I think nobody really knows how much use this technology is in
defeating such an alien mindset. We don’t get why it is so attractive to so
many people.

19.What
kind of advice would you give an aspiring author trying to write a
political-thriller?

Forget that it is a political thriller and
just create vivid characters in whose fate the readers get interested.

20.What
scene was your favorite scene to write?

I think those scenes where a stranger
walks into town – Wilkins arriving in the Swat Valley – or Stoner arriving in
Islamabad – are fun because you see something exotic through their eyes. The
second type of fun scenes is the scenes when the fighting starts and there are
huge explosions. Action is much easier than the beginning where you have to set
everything up and worry that you will lose the reader’s attention.